But isn't that the same Lib Dems who on Edinburgh Council voted and campaigned against PPP. Will they now bid to be amongst the Councils to have school under PPP (and will there be level playing field support as there was under Labour...)

2 comments:

I never understood why the Labour Party so enthusiastically embraced privatisation via the PPP route - it was one of the reasons why I left the party.

Yes you get shiny new buildings. But they are usually of very low quality, the staff that provide most of the auxillary services are moved into the private sector - janitors, cleaners etc - and in the case of schools we have had contracts where school sports teams have to pay to use their own fields...

And for all this we pay through the nose for decades. Sorry, but I still don't get it...

PPP got us a huge number of schools very quickly after years of neglect. What was called the "traditional route" had failed as well because school maintenance, now embedded into price, was a soft target for cuts. The private sector still built schools under the traditional route and still made money from the loans involved but under PPP they take the risk. I take the point that some contracts were not as tight as they should have been but that's not a given in all cases. PPP does not work in all sectors. I think the ERI contract is a disaster but it has done for schools. And as for costs. when you count maintenance costs and risk transfer, the cost to the taxpayer is not as some would have you believe.

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Ewan Aitken

email Ewan at ewan.aitken@edinburgh.gov.uk

About Me

I was elected to the City of Edinburgh Council in 1999. After 7 years of being very heavily involved in Education, I was elected Council Leader in August 2006 and from May 2007 until June 2008 was Labour Group leader when I returned to the backbenches

I am ordained in the Church of Scotland but I don't have a parish. Instead I am the Secretary of the Church of Scotland's Church and Society Council.

I am an Honorary Research Fellow of the University of Glasgow and an Honorary Fellow of Edinburgh University. I am married with two children, I am a member of the Iona Community and I enjoy sports though mostly as an armchair critic.

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I welcome strong opinions strongly expressed, but please don't use this blog if you intend to be abusive or intend to use offensive language. The public conversation that I want to encourage must be based on mutual respect and common courtesy.